People, Planet, Profits & Projects

This is a story about risk response. And New Jersey. Let’s start with some definitions.

• The 6^th Edition of PMI’s PMBOK® Guide defines “Risk Avoidance” as ‘when the project team acts to eliminate the threat, or protect from its impact’.It involves ‘changing the plan or objective that is in jeopardy in order to eliminate the threat entirely’.
• They further describe “Risk Mitigation” as ‘action taken to reduce the probability of occurrence and/or impact of the threat’.
• Introduced in the 6^th Edition, “Overall” project risk is ‘the effect of uncertainty on the project as a whole, arising from all sources of uncertainty, including individual risks, representing exposure of stakeholders to the implications of variation of project outcome, both positive and negative’.For the purposes of this post, we can think of overall project risk as those that ‘sweep through’ the whole project.

In PMI terms, these are distinct and different ways of response strategies for threats.  In my graduate PM courses at Boston University, I teach (through examples) that in practice, a flowing minestrone soup of risk response – a mélange, a mixture, is often used, not distinct, staccato responses.

That’s the case with respect to the risk response to sea-level rise.  Whatever your feelings about climate change and its causes, the reality is that sea levels are rising and island nations and coastal communities are RIGHT NOW facing the threats of sea-level rise, and the flooding, erosion, and other effects that come along with it.  Sea-level rise is a fact, plain and simple.  This is void of politics, bias, or opinion.  Studies by the US military show the upcoming effects, of note, in this report.  You can see a video about sea-level rise based on that study in the video below.  In the video, the following sentence (aligned with this blog post!) is heard: “combinations of measures are more effective in reducing risk than reliance on a single solution”.  There it is: minestrone.

One very meaningful effect is the loss of property.  I called this blog post “Tame Abandon” – a sort of play on words from the expression ‘wild abandon’ (look it up).  This is about responding to threat by virtue of retreat – of abandonment, but in a way that is productive and is not admitting defeat, not at all.

A very interesting article from Scientific American, called “Underwater: Coastal communities struggling to adapt to rising seas are beginning to do what was once unthinkable – retreat”, caught my attention.  You should read this article as a citizen of Earth but also as a project manager.  Think about it from the perspective of risk response, from the perspective of PROGRAM management, because what you’ll learn if you read this is that risk response, in some cases, has taken on the form of new PROGRAMS which are a minestrone – a soup – of risk avoidance, risk mitigation, and overall risk management, as defined by PMI.

Here is an excellent video summary of the article (think of it as a motivation to read the article, not as a substitute for reading it!).

To summarize the article, which focuses mainly on the US state of New Jersey, the statistics are frightening.  250,000 homes, says the article, representing a total value of $108 billion, are at risk of chronic flooding within the next 30 years.  20 of 21 counties in the state have shorelines that are “tidally influenced” by sea-level rise.  Read more about that here, in an article from the State.  The article goes on to talk about the Blue Acres Buyout Program (note: PROGRAM) which has been put in place to avoid the threat to the homeowners in affected areas buy having them abandon their homes and to let the resulting land go ‘back to nature’.  This is the risk avoidance portion of the response.  By recovering this land, however, and letting it ‘recover’, it will help prevent future flooding.  This is the mitigation portion of the risk response.

If you happen to live in or near New Jersey and are curious about your own home, or have a relative there and want to check for them, there is a site that shows the situation by geography.  It’s called the NJ Flood Mapper: http://www.njfloodmapper.org/slr/.

Getting back to Scientific American - its article describes the story so well, it’s better if I don’t continue to summarize it - read it for yourself.   I hope that with this blog post, I’ve opened up your thinking to read it in a different way, under a project management lens.  It’s my hope that this is a mutually-beneficial lesson in that as a PM, we have much to offer the world in the way of project and program management of such risk responses, and that as you see the impact and effect of such things as sea-level rise, you gain a longer-term, more ‘benefits realization’ vision of project management.

In parts 1 and 2 of this special series on ‘plastic risk management’, I tied together the concept of project risk management and the identification and analysis of the threat of plastic pollution in the ocean, including and especially the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  This post is going to be short and sweet because I want you to watch the embedded videos which really tell the story.  I will even resist the blogger's temptation to review Parts 1 and 2; instead, I will point you to this excellent video:

A possible solution (risk response!) has been proposed and has been taken to reality by an organization called OceanCleanup, founded by young Dutch inventor Boyan Slat.

In just a couple of weeks, this company’s risk response will be launched.  In an amazing video, Boyan Slat takes you through the entire Risk ID to Risk Response journey in quite an audio-visual-sensory way, and in a gigantic room that will make any of you who do presentations salivate.  If you get nothing else out of these posts, have a look at the style and persuasiveness (and scope) of this presentation!

From this talk comes the actual launch of “System 001”.  This is the risk response!

I have not a lot to add; see this for what it is: a project.  Note the passion, the "connectedness" of the mission to the project’s outcome, the way the project is promoted, and the discipline which must’ve been invoked to get to this launch.

This is a newsworthy project, so keep your eyes and ears open for the press coverage of this event on 8-September.  Here at projectmanagement.com and in particular at People, Planet, Profits & Projects we try to stay current, so YOU can stay current (excuse the pun).

Your thoughts?

In Part 1 of this post, I presented the problem – the threat – of not one, but several giant plastic garbage patches in Earth’s oceans and what that means to sea life (and land life, for example, human project managers).  Taking a project management approach, I provided information on the threat so we could understand the impact and begin to identify risk responses.  That post closed with research from Professor Jenna Jemback of the University of Georgia and a challenge from me to you to count the number of plastic items you touched in a particular period after reading the post.

First, let me thank those of you who responded (quite a few!). Typically, the number was over 50 in just a few hours, one of you even counted 20 touched plastic items on your way to your car after reading the article!

So you literally can sense this threat, perhaps in a very tactile way you hadn’t before.

Let’s switch gears now, and do what we do best as project managers, look at solving the problem – even turning the threat into an opportunity - or a whole portfolio of opportunities.

In the remaining parts of this post I’ll talk about how industry has responded (Part 2) and will save the best for last in Part 3, which will probably make you smile because it is about a tremendous project to solve the problem – so you may actually smile twice - once for the project itself and once for the potential results it seems capable of providing.

In this short Part 2, however, I will talk in general about the way industry has the chance to step up and help solve the problem but also do that in a way that generates revenue and pays off for investors.

They say: “follow the money” to help trace corruption – or solve problems.  Here (thankfully) we are focused on solving problems.  So I begin Part 2 with a report that – well, I’ll let the abstract of the report tell you about itself:

The goal of this report is to show how private capital can play a meaningful role in tackling the issues of plastic pollution across the world’s ocean. Numerous investment opportunities are highlighted across the risk/return spectrum where investors can gain a return on investment, while also having a meaningful impact on the problem of ocean plastics

In the foreword of the report, we also find this:

This is a challenge of global proportions, but, if there is good news, it is that the worst effects of ocean plastics can still be avoided with strategic, timely and coordinated actions. There is still time, and there is ample opportunity, for diverse funders to make a series of well-orchestrated, high-impact investments that will meaningfully shift the trajectory our ocean is currently following.

Do you see the connection to project management? “Strategic, timely, and coordinated actions” – hello, project managers, this is our ‘thang’, isn’t it?  Overseeing “well-orchestrated, high-impact investments” – isn’t that the signature work of our profession?  It sure is!

Here are the opportunities covered in the report:

Opportunities From Source Through Use

• Accelerate and Scale
• Better Materials
• Promote Innovative Products and Circular Business Models

Opportunities With Post-Consumer Plastics

• Advance Collection, Tracking, and Sorting Innovations
• Engage and Support the Informal Waste Sector
• Enhance Recycling, Repurposing, and Composting
• Develop Responsible Waste-to-Energy Conversion Solutions
• Support Integrated Waste Management Solutions

The report is huge, is full of opportunities, and mentions the word “project” dozens of times.

So let’s just pick one – Waste to Energy (WTE) and take a look at the opportunities.  Below is a video from the American Chemistry Council and although it starts with a bit on recycling plastics, it moves quickly to an illustration of  the many ways that non-recyclable plastics can be converted to energy in such ways as gasification.

Again, this is just one of the many branches pointed to in the report, and from this, you can learn much more by going to:

American Chemistry site on Plastics

https://plastics.americanchemistry.com/default.aspx

Materials Recovery For the Future (MRFF)

https://www.materialsrecoveryforthefuture.com/

But take a look at the entire report, too:

http://encouragecapital.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Sea-of-Opportunity-Plastics-Report-full-report.pdf

The best is yet to come – in Part 3 we will look at something really special – a project to go right after the problem and collect the waste that is already “out there’ in the oceans. 

That's in part 3... coming soon!

I approach this three part (!!!) post from the PMI® viewpoint about risk.

Risk, as you likely know, can be described as negative risk, the risk we usually think of, called threat, and positive risk, called opportunity.  When I started this story it was very depressing – because I thought of it only as a threat.  But a deeper dive (excuse the pun) led me to the conclusion that there was both threat and opportunity here.  In fact, I’ll treat this as a three-part series.  Part 1 will focus on risk identification, Part 2 on threat and opportunity analysis, and Part 3 on risk response – and the initiation of a huge project that will capture your imagination and tickle your project management fancy.

So – all that said, let’s start with Part 1: Risk Identification.  What’s the risk, and why was it so depressing at first? 

Here’s a challenge for you, dear reader.  Consciously note and identify the number of plastic items you touch over the next 24 hours.  In fact, let’s make this a bit interactive.  I request that you respond to this post with that count of touches and items.  Log it on a piece of note paper, remembering that the pen you use is also likely made of plastic.  Plastic is everywhere.  You’re reading this post while touching a plastic bezel of a device or with your hands resting on a plastic keyboard and/or mouse, and looking at a plastic monitor, perhaps snacking on pretzels in a plastic bag (watch those crumbs!).  So the risk I’m talking about is indeed – plastic.

Many of you have heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  For those not familiar with the situation, first of all, the word “patch” makes it sound way too small.  It’s actually (currently) twice the size of Texas.  And – ask anyone in Texas, Texas is BIG.  Below is an image from a recent article in New Scientist magazine:

This is not just about litter – the plastic affects a much larger food chain – including us.  And it’s not just this patch, where the plastic happens to concentrate.  Remember your project management training – a risk is not a risk unless it has an effect on project objectives.  In this case, for sake of argument, the “project” is continuing good quality of life on this planet.  From the below, you can see that this definitely qualifies as a risk.  Research suggests that not one square mile of surface ocean anywhere on earth is free of plastic pollution.  Here is one small sample regarding fish, from research on the effect of plastics on sea life:

“Fish in the North Pacific ingest 12,000 to 24,000 tons of plastic each year, which can cause intestinal injury and death and transfers plastic up the food chain to bigger fish and marine mammals. A recent study found that a quarter of fish at markets in California contained plastic in their guts, mostly in the form of plastic microfibers.”

Where’s the plastic coming from?  In other words, what’s the cause – the source of this risk?

In a very recent NPR story, Jenna Jambeck (website: https://jambeck.engr.uga.edu/ ) describes well the sources of plastic.  A graphic below helps explain it as well. 

Professor Jambeck has collaborated on a technical article recently published in Science magazine which details this:

Science magazine article - Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/768.full

From the abstract:

By linking worldwide data on solid waste, population density, and economic status, we estimated the mass of land-based plastic waste entering the ocean. We calculate that 275 million metric tons (MT) of plastic waste was generated in 192 coastal countries in 2010, with 4.8 to 12.7 million MT entering the ocean. Population size and the quality of waste management systems largely determine which countries contribute the greatest mass of uncaptured waste available to become plastic marine debris. Without waste management infrastructure improvements, the cumulative quantity of plastic waste available to enter the ocean from land is predicted to increase by an order of magnitude by 2025.  The plastic garbage patch may even be much bigger than we thought, according to this recent article.  And, oh, by the way, this is not the only mass of debris.  Each of Earth’s gyres (click on the link and/or see below) also contain vast amounts of plastic.

So, the problem is huge, and it’s growing, but we have identified the threat and we have a much better handle on its size.  In Part 2 of this three-part post, I’ll talk more about the risk analysis and move towards a risk response.

But before you leave...  remember my challenge to you.  Track the plastic items that you touch over the next 24 hours (or whatever period you can bear doing this) and respond to this post with your numbers and if you're willing, a table showing the number and the items.

Photo courtesy of Pensthorpe National park - http://www.pensthorpe.com/animal/barnacle-goose/

Today’s tongue-twister (say that title five times fast!) is brought to you by Branta leucopsis.  This is a species of bird commonly known as the barnacle goose (see photo).  And although this will be about geese and migration and climate, it will have a project management angle. 
Let’s start by decomposing the title of the blog post. See what I did there?  Right away, a key PM term! 

• Flapping: in this case, flapping is referring to flying, and in particular, migratory flying
• Fowl: the general name for geese, ducks, chickens, and balls hit out of bounds in baseball, or an illegal play in basketball, if you allow for misspelled versions of the word…
• Phenological: having to do with phenomena such as migrations related to the effects of climate.
• Phasing: here we refer to getting ‘out of phase’ in terms of migration – that is, leaving, or arriving, at the wrong time so that the migration does not fulfill its objective, which is usually to arrive so that mating and offspring have high probabilities of success.
• Fatalities: unfortunately, due to changes in climate, the survival rates of offspring have been dropping, as you will see in this post and in the referenced articles.

This post was triggered by the hours-old article on NPR’s Science pages, Migrating Arctic Geese Are Confused, Exhausted By Rising Temperatures.  Yes, somehow, not only did this catch my eye, but it caught my attention as a project manager.  Why?  A big point of this article relates to a fixed starting time for a task.  As PMs, we know all about task dependencies, and the danger – or at least the constraining effect – of fixed dates on our schedule.

In this case, the schedule is about survival of a species, and the task is the migration to the north for Branta Leucopsis, so as to maximize arrival at nesting grounds during a “food peak”.

According to the article as well as other scientific research recently published, such as this article from Current Biology, there are now earlier springs in the Arctic.  This means the geese should be changing their departure time to arrive properly during the “food peak” to benefit their goslings.  From the articles:

Historically, the geese have arrived just after the snow melts and lay their eggs right away. That gives plants time to start growing so that the goslings can benefit from what is known as a "food peak."

These days, the weather in parts of the journey north is warmer than it used to be and the birds seem to realize that they're running late. They start to speed up — a lot.

A journey that usually takes the barnacle geese a month now takes about a week, the researchers found. It's a marathon: "They fly nearly nonstop from the wintering areas to their breeding grounds," Bart Nolet (a researcher from the University of Amsterdam) says.

Even though they make up time on the way (crashing the schedule!), the exhausted geese can't lay eggs right away because they need time to forage and recover — some 10 more days. 

That means the goslings are no longer able to enjoy that tasty and nutritious "food peak," as Nolet put it. Instead, "when the eggs hatch, the food is already deteriorating in quality, and what we found (in this research project) is that goslings survive less well in such an early year than they do normally."

This is where that ‘fixed start date’ comes in.  The trigger for this their departure – the dependency, if you will, is not temperature, but light and length of days, says the research.  The distance between their North Sea residence and the breeding grounds in the Arctic, after all, is more than 3000 miles (see figure below).  The geese, unlike project managers, with excellent information systems with the latest compiled data, information, and knowledge, don’t have any idea of the weather 3000 miles away, they only have the current and very local information on which to make their decisions.

And here’s the thing – it’s not just geese.  In fact, geese, due to their ‘flocking’ behavior may actually have an advantage in that they may be a bit more flexible, following any ‘leaders’ who leave earlier.  Other birds – shore birds, may not have this flexibility and may be even more prone to climactic changes that could be very debilitating to survival.

Generally, climate change is likely to create this kind of mismatch for animals that migrate long distances. It's harder for them to adjust, Nolet says, when they spend part of the year in a totally different climate

This is another example of how changes to the climate remind us of the need to aim at reductions in the causes and to be more aware of the effects and the surprising relationship of climate change to projects, project management, and project management wisdom.
I invite you to watch this 5-minute video about the migration, and in the video you get to see the Branta leucopsis close up.